Below is a selection of games that stood out to us while browsing kickstarter.com.

Backing a project can be a great thing, but please do the research on a game before you put money into it. Happy exploring!

Role-Playing Games

Miniatures Games

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For anyone who isn’t already paying attention to Spirit Island, I can’t recommend highly enough that you start. It’s a highly-thematic cooperative game where the players are spirits of nature that exist on an island that is being colonized. The invaders don’t live in harmony with the land and you need to team up to scare them off before they destroy you.

I’ve been testing this game for about a year now and it’s neck and neck with Sentinels of the Multiverse (same publisher) for my favorite game. Some of the strong points, for me:
-unique player powers – there are a ton of spirits and they all have different abilities and play styles
-teamwork required – the spirits all have different strengths and weaknesses; in addition to direct bolstering, there are many opportunities for spirits to work together to solve problems that neither one could deal with alone
-the theme isn’t painted on – it’s very well integrated with the mechanics
-the game allows for a good balance of tactical and strategic thinking
-no alpha gamers – Spirit Island has enough moving parts that it really isn’t possible for a single player to dominate the rest
-there are a variety of very granular difficulty levels that cover a wide range – easy is pretty doable most of the time and the hardest levels are VERY challenging
-lots of replayability – even replaying the same game with the same setup may force you to change your strategy depending on where the invaders focus their efforts and what powers you gain

I’m going to stop now before this wall of text gets any longer.

There’s one week left in the Kickstarter. It has already hit a bunch of stretch goals, but the two I’m most excited about are coming up next. If you think you might be interested, check out the Updates section of the Kickstarter – the designer has been posting really cool descriptions of a few of the spirits, the adversaries, and some of the other game mechanics. There’s also a full playthrough video and print and play files if you want to get a better feel for what the game is like.